A Roll of the Dice Read online

  While he finished his dinner, he wondered what Jenny and Shayla were talking about.

  Wondered exactly to what depths Jenny wanted to explore all of this.

  Even more, he wondered if their marriage would survive it.

  Chapter Ten

  Jenny fought the urge to pace in the restaurant’s lobby until she spotted Shayla heading up the front walk. The women exchanged a brief hug before the hostess seated them in a booth toward the back of the restaurant.

  Jenny leaned in. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

  “Does your husband know you’re here?”

  “Oh, I told him we were going to talk.”

  “He’s not handling this well, is he?”

  Jenny pondered that. “It’s not that he’s not handling it well, it’s that I haven’t figured out how to tell him what it is I want from this.”

  Shayla smiled. “He can’t read your mind.”

  “I know.” The waitress took their drink orders and left them alone again. “Can I let him read your articles?”

  “Of course. I figured you probably had already.”

  “We haven’t had a chance to really talk yet.”

  “So what is it that you want from this?”

  Jenny tried to answer and couldn’t. “I don’t know.”

  Shayla reached across the table and gently squeezed Jenny’s hands. “That’s what you need to figure out before you guys go any farther. Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of people dive headfirst into the deep end of the pool, flounder, and then climb out and never get back in. Ease into this. Let him read some of your Kindle books.”

  Jenny felt her face heat. “I don’t know if I want him reading them.”

  Shayla laughed. “Why not?”

  “You know why not. They’re…” She couldn’t say it.

  “You have a child with him,” Shayla teased. “He obviously knows where they come from.”

  “But I don’t want him to think I want to have like three guys instead of just him.”

  The waitress brought their drinks, took their dinner orders, and left them alone again. Jenny was glad for the distraction of playing with her straw. “How does Tony feel about you reading those books?”

  She shrugged. “He doesn’t care. It’s my hobby. Just like I don’t care what kind of books he reads. Hell, he’s read those kinds of books before. Once we got our act together and settled into a routine after we got married, he asked me to show him what books I enjoyed.”

  Jenny nearly choked in the middle of taking a sip of her iced tea. “What?”

  Shayla grinned. “Sir isn’t a prude. One of our friends, who’s in a poly triad, is a writer. He’s a retired cop and he writes erotic fiction that makes some of what we read look like See Spot Run.”

  That swallow of tea did go down the wrong way. Jenny grabbed her napkin as she struggled to swallow and choke at the same time and not spray tea all over the table or the other woman.

  “What?” she eventually choked out. “You mean those people we met Sunday?”

  “No, different triad. Similar dynamic, though. The men are involved with each other as well as with their woman. Hopefully you’ll get to meet them soon. They live up in Tarpon Springs.”

  “I didn’t know people…you know…really did that.”

  “You didn’t realize people really did BDSM, either, until you talked to me at book club.”

  “Okay, you have a point there.”

  Shayla leaned in closer and dropped her voice even more. “Lots of people are poly, or swingers, or whatever flavor of non-monogamy they practice, but they can’t be open about it. There’s still a huge stigma attached to it when there shouldn’t be. You might already know other people into non-monogamy or BDSM and have no clue about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Shayla sat back. “You all were afraid to outright ask me about my private life.” A playful smile curved her lips. “I was wondering how long it would be, how many books it would take, before someone finally outright asked me.”

  “Why didn’t you just say something?”

  She shrugged. “Because no one asked. Sir and I, and a lot of our friends, believe in a very broad interpretation of consent. Meaning just like you and your husband don’t go sit in a park and make out, we don’t push any part of our lifestyle on people who haven’t consented to witness it. We have some very subtle public protocols that the average vanilla would never blink an eye at. We never want to be the reason a child looks at their parents and asks, ‘Why are they doing that?’ If we’re in public, no one else has consented to be part of our dynamic. So we keep it confined to certain parameters that don’t intrude on others.

  “However,” she continued, “if we’re at a club, or a fetish party, or we’re in our own home with lifestyle friends, we don’t hide who we are or what we do. We shouldn’t have to. They understand the parameters of the situation and can either stay or leave.”

  “What if you have your family over or something? Do they know what’s going on?”

  “Some of them do,” Shayla confirmed. “When we’re in a mixed group, whether family or friends, who don’t know about our lifestyle, we keep it vanilla. Only when we know that it’s a lifestyle or kink-friendly crowd do we openly practice what we do.”

  Jenny chewed on that for a few moments. Then she noticed Shayla’s necklace. It was a gold chain from which hung a gold, heart-shaped tag. While she’d admired it before, she’d never closely examined it. “That’s your day collar, isn’t it?”

  Shayla smiled. “Yes.” She leaned in again, holding the tag turned around so Jenny could read it. The initials AD were engraved on it.

  “What does that mean?” Jenny asked.

  “Sir’s initials. His full first name is Anthony, even though He doesn’t go by that. On the tag on my formal collar that I wear for fetish events, His initials are engraved as TD for Tony Daniels. But it has my slave number on it.”

  “Slave number?” Now Jenny was starting to think maybe she’d jumped in a little over her head.

  Shayla sat back. “It’s a website where you can register slaves or submissives or whatever. It has absolutely no official standing. It’s just fun bullshit. But it’s…” She seemed to be grasping for the words. “It’s a layer of commitment,” Shayla finally said. “Just like you can go get married by a clerk at the courthouse on your lunch hour, or you can get your marriage license and then get married by a preacher in a huge, lavish ceremony.”

  “Do we have to do that?” Jenny asked.

  Shayla shrugged. “You don’t ‘have’ to do anything. There aren’t any rules to this. Contrary to what some people think, no one’s going to show up at your door and tell you you’re doing BDSM ‘wrong.’ Well, you might run across asshats who think if you’re not doing things their way that you’re doing it wrong, but there are only three hard and fast ‘rules’ to BDSM, other than safety precautions, of course.”

  “Do I need to know them?”

  Shayla’s smile turned playful. “You sure you want to hear them? Might scare you off.”

  Jenny knew Shayla was just teasing. That didn’t make her heart pound any less hard in her chest.

  She nodded.

  Shayla held up one finger. “Everyone has to be a consenting, human adult.” She held up a second finger. “Everyone has to either be having fun or getting what they need out of the dynamic.” She added a third finger. “No one can be harmed by what you do.” She reached for her own tea and took a sip.

  Jenny blinked, thinking she’d missed something. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “I know, right? Sounds like it should be a lot more complicated than that. You know all that bullshit we read in books about these fancy clubs and rituals and rules and all that other stuff?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “That’s all bullshit. Most of those books are written by writers who have never been in the lifestyle,
much less set foot in a real BDSM club. Some writers get it more right than others, but if you want a list of authors who are really in the lifestyle, and who really get things right, let me know.”

  “Why haven’t you shared that with us before?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want to scare you guys or have you think I was a freak. Again, the whole consent thing. No one, at any time, has specifically asked me for a list of authors I know are involved in the lifestyle, or for books that accurately portray the lifestyle. I’m not saying it’s wrong to read the books we’ve been reading. We’re reading them. But they’re entertainment, not a statement of fact.

  “And here’s another thing. Some people will claim they’re involved in the lifestyle just to sell books. Hell, I know of at least one case where a vanilla female author pretended to be a male Master in the lifestyle. But those of us in the lifestyle could tell the person really wasn’t, or if they were, they were a sociopathic predator. The stuff they wrote was total bullshit.”

  “What happened?”

  Shayla grinned. “Tilly found out through someone else that it was a woman and did some checking. Dumb shit registered her websites all in her own name and to the same PO box. That’s all public record. Wasn’t hard to figure it out. A few other people, book bloggers, figured it out, too. Then they posted screenshots. Backfired on the woman big-time. People started leaving a flood of one-star reviews on all her books under all her pen names once the secret got out.”

  “But I thought people liked BDSM books?”

  “Oh, they do. But it pisses readers off when you lie to them and claim you’re someone you’re not just so you can cash in on a fad. Someone wants to write a book, fine. Go for it. But if they want to think readers are stupid enough to fall for that kind of bullshit—and I mean this female author was having Facebook and e-mail conversations with readers and pretending to be a male Master, like this whole elaborate ruse to suck people in, even flirting with female readers and having her boyfriend pose as the Master persona in phone calls—then they will have to also be prepared to deal with the fallout on the other side of it when their most rabid supporters realize that they were lied to. Readers generally don’t like it when fiction is portrayed to be more factual than it really is.”

  “I never realized that.”

  Shayla let out a laugh. “Oh, you have nooo idea.”

  “I thought writers used pen names all the time.”

  “They do. But they usually don’t sit there and create elaborate alternate identities they try to pass off to the public as real people, either. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if an author is in the lifestyle or not, or writes under a different pen name to make them look like they’re a different gender. As long as they don’t try to bullshit readers to sucker them in with some sort of sick game. But enough about that.”

  Their food arrived and Shayla once again waited until their waitress had left to lean in and drop her voice. “I think what you and I need to do right now is see if we can’t whittle down your desires to something you can put into words and then tell your husband so he’s not clueless about what you want.”

  “I would really appreciate that.”

  Shayla obviously started at the hard-core end of the scale. Jenny didn’t have to be an expert on BDSM to understand that. As Shayla went down a list of different activities that had Jenny feeling a little squeamish in a bad way, Jenny started to see why Shayla was doing it.

  Chipping away at the log with a chainsaw until the vague shape of an animal started to take recognizable form.

  After they’d finished eating, Shayla seemed to think for a moment. “It sounds like to me that, right now, you enjoy the sexual domination end of things. Maybe with a service submissive aspect to it. Sensual stuff. But you aren’t really interested in pain or impact play. Am I understanding you correctly?”

  Jenny nodded, her face heating again.

  “People change. People grow. Where you are now doesn’t mean it’s where you’ll be five or ten years from now. Hell, five or ten months from now, even. But there’s your starting point.”

  “How do I tell my husband that?” Jenny asked.

  “Simple. Tell him you want him to hold you down during sex, that you want him to take control. Pin your wrists down.”

  Jenny’s face went hot over that statement.

  Shayla cocked her head, her gaze narrowing. “What?”

  It took every ounce of will to admit it. “I thought that same thing during sex last weekend. That I wished he’d pin my wrists down.”

  Shayla held up her hands. “There you go. Easy-peasey. You just said it to me.”

  “What if it hurts his feelings?”

  “Why would it hurt his feelings? He went with you to a munch. Whether you realize it or not, it took a lot of balls on his part to do that. And a lot of guts on yours. It’s just like any other kind of sex where if something doesn’t feel good, you have to say it. Or if something feels good and you want him to do it, you have to tell him rather than keeping him guessing. I’d be willing to bet that since he went to the munch with you, telling him you’d like him to pin you down during sex might actually come as a relief to him.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled. “He’ll see it’s not all about whips and chains.”

  * * * *

  When they parted ways a short time later, Shayla had conferred with her husband via text and then invited Jenny and Michael to dinner at their house on Friday night.

  Jenny hoped Michael wouldn’t be upset with her that she’d accepted the invitation without talking to him about it first.

  Wasn’t like they had to worry about Mikey’s schedule.

  When she returned home, she found Mike in the living room, on the couch with his laptop and the TV on.

  “How was dinner with Shayla?” he asked.

  She leaned in to kiss him hello, grateful he’d brought that up first. “Good. Informative. I hope you don’t mind, but she and Tony invited us to dinner at their place on Friday night. I said yes.”

  He stiffened. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “She texted him while we were talking and cleared it with him. I’m sure if it wasn’t a good idea that he wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

  She headed toward the bedroom to get her shower, struggling to rein in her frustration. Why should she have to lead him to this? Why couldn’t he just go with it? It wasn’t like she was asking him to let her have anonymous sex with people. Hell, she didn’t want to have sex with anyone but her husband.

  She just wanted him to be a little more willing to take what she was offering.

  * * * *

  Mike watched Jenny head into the bedroom. He knew he’d just missed something, but wasn’t sure what. He was well familiar with that tone of voice. Like he’d just asked her where something was in the fridge that he should have seen for himself because it was right in front of him.

  He put his laptop aside and followed her into the master bathroom. She’d already started the shower and was getting undressed.

  “Do you want to talk about this?” he asked.

  “Right now, I want to get a shower.”

  Yep, there was the chilly edge to her voice.

  “Tony sent me the link to Shayla’s articles.”

  Jenny froze, her back to him. “And?”

  “I’ve read most of them. Still working my way through them.”

  “And?”

  “I think we need to talk. More than once, and probably in great detail. I don’t know what you want and I don’t want to let you down.”

  That seemed to thaw the ice. She turned and hugged him. “I’m still trying to figure out what I want. Shayla helped me narrow it down a lot tonight. But I think you’re right that it’s going to be a process, not just a one-night brainstorming session. I do know I don’t want anyone but you. So if that’s a concern you have, please don’t worry. I love you, only you, and I only want you.”

  That did help. He felt a
little of the emotional weight roll off his shoulders as he tightly hugged her to him. “That helps a lot, sweetheart. More than you know.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Wednesday night, Mike ended up not getting home until after ten o’clock due to an emergency at work. One of their guys had to call off because he was sick, and then they had a problem with one of their databases. Mike, Tony, and another guy stayed on to figure it out and get it fixed so the normal overnight crew could deal with their usual tasks despite being short-handed.

  And when he arrived home from work, all Mike wanted to do was vegetate and relax. Not discuss anything.

  Luckily for him, Jenny seemed tuned in to his mood and didn’t push for any kind of discussions other than what to watch on TV.

  Thursday night, Jenny had book club, while Mike’s Dungeons and Dragons game was at Rusty and Eliza’s house.

  The irony did not escape him.

  What were the odds that the wife of his boss would be in the same book group as his own wife? And that the four of them would show up at the same munch?

  And that he had other friends who went to that same munch?

  It was like he’d rolled a critical fumble when it came to his luck. Of course he didn’t mind talking about his sex life with his own wife.

  It did, after all, sort of concern her just a little, tiny bit.

  He was not, however, comfortable discussing his sex life with his friends or other people. That was private.

  Unfortunately, it seemed that he’d reached a point in his life where he’d have to start doing just that, talking about his sex life with others, if he was going to make it through all of this with his sanity intact.

  After the game ended, Mike hung around until everyone else had left.

  “Need to talk about the munch?” Eliza asked.

  “Sort of.”

  Rusty leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead. Did you meet Tony and Shay?”

  “Um, yeah. FYI, he’s my goddamned boss.”

  Both Rusty and Eliza winced. “Oooh, dude,” Rusty said. “That’s rough. Sorry. I thought he was a better guy than that. I didn’t think he’d fire you.”